Emergency safety showers and eyewash stations are important in many workplaces and particularly in workplaces that utilize corrosive chemicals. Safety showers, in general, are intended to provide a drenching flow of water that a user may stand in to quickly rinse away corrosive, toxic, or other dangerous substances to which the user may have been exposed. Eyewash stations produce flows of water with directions and rates suitable for flushing chemicals or irritants out of a user's eyes. Modern facilities in which handling of dangerous substances is anticipated often have emergency safety shower and eyewash stations that were part of the original facility design, but many emergency safety stations have been added to facilities as afterthoughts when a building was repurposed or when regulations were enacted after the original building construction. As a result, some emergency safety stations may not have been designed into or included with the original engineering of the buildings or structures that house the stations. In any case, some emergency safety stations may have improper installations or inadequate water supply or drainage that makes the stations difficult or unsafe to use or maintain. Safety stations may also be rarely used and may therefore be untested, neglected, or unmaintained for months or years, particularly because current testing methods may spray water on technicians and surroundings of the emergency safety station. All of these factors can lead to safety stations that fail to adequately perform in an emergency.
Some governmental agencies and industry groups have promulgated laws, regulations, and standards that set performance requirements or benchmarks for emergency safety shower and eyewash stations and require testing of such stations in an effort to ensure that the stations will operate properly and as expected when needed. These laws, regulations, and standards may particularly set forth performance parameters such as minimum and maximum shower heights, shower and eyewash water flow rates, and water quality and temperature requirements, but the inconvenience of current testing systems and techniques still inhibits full and frequent testing of safety shower and eyewash stations necessary for compliance with the relevant laws, regulations, and standards.